Many types of insurance coverage, such as those for personal or commercial property, have coverage terms and conditions in which the insurer will reimburse the insured for damage or loss to personal property items (in the case of personal lines insurance policies) or for damage or loss to commercial property items such as inventory or equipment (in the case of commercial lines policies). For example, if an item of personal property is stolen or damaged, many insurance policies may reimburse the insured so that the insured may obtain a suitable replacement. Similar coverage is provided for businesses. For example, a retailer may carry a commercial lines policy which covers the retailer's inventory in the case of loss or damage. Often, however, it can be difficult for an insurer to verify that an item of property was, in fact, owned by the insured. In the case of businesses, such as retailers, it is difficult to verify what items were actually in the retailer's inventory at the time of a loss, as inventories change on a daily basis.
Further, many losses arise from events such as fires or floods. In such situations, it can be difficult for an insured to remember all of the items that may have been lost or damaged. It is also difficult to locate receipts, or otherwise locate evidence of ownership or value. It would be desirable to provide systems and methods for insurance policy holders to create and maintain an inventory of personal property. It would further be desirable to allow the use of such an inventory to document claims in the event of a loss.
Insurance policies have coverage limits and exclusions. For example, a homeowner policy may cover up to $100,000 of personal property items (a “coverage limit”) but will not cover fine art (an “exclusion”). Insurance policy holders often do not know if the value of their personal property exceeds these limits or what items are excluded from coverage. It would be desirable to provide systems and methods to alert policy holders if the value of covered items exceeds the coverage limits of an existing policy, or if an item is excluded from coverage. It would further be desirable to provide systems and methods to price and provide coverage based on the current value of property owned by an insured.
It would further be desirable to provide systems and methods which allow the creation and updating of such proof of ownership data to be collected and updated using mobile devices.